


If There Is a God They Don't Know Why It's So Hard

by orphan_account



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Existentialism, Gen, mentions of war death and other tragedies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27157105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The last conversation Jonny and Nastya had the day before she left. Well, not quite a conversation, more of exchange. A few words passed between the two. What you'd call doesn't really matter. It's still a connection between people
Kudos: 10





	If There Is a God They Don't Know Why It's So Hard

**Author's Note:**

> (look at me, a newbie writer and I already have a song lyric title)  
> Inspired by a few posts I saw about the Mechs and the nature of immortality. Also influenced by my own feelings of being human and finding meaning in life. Someone please tell me to workshop stories and not try to post them so fast

Nastya walked up to Jonny who was sitting at the deck at the edge of the ship. This was it. This was the moment where she told him. She’d made this decision long ago and there was nothing that could change her mind.

So why was she afraid? It wasn’t like her to be afraid. What was fear to her, an immortal? She’d seen wars, violence, tragedy, and heartbreak. None of it mattered. Fear was an antiquated side effect left over from being mortal. An evolutionary adaptation that had outlived its use, like an appendix. Fear belonged to those who get hurt. It couldn’t hurt her. Nothing could hurt her. 

Nastya should know by now. She knew there was still no purpose in life, yet still deep inside her she felt a craving to go find it. She knew love was meaningless yet she held the Aurora close to her deep at night. She knew sadness did nothing yet still she was kept up at night by a despair she couldn’t quite explain nor get rid of. And she knew she had no reason to feel fear, yet something deep in her throat, deep in her chest, made it impossible for her to open her mouth and talk to Johnny.

That was how it was. That was just how it fucking was. Even when you couldn’t be killed. Even when the largest explosion and the bloodiest war couldn’t kill you. Even when you had seen it all. Even when you knew it all. Even when the laws of physics, nature, reality didn’t bound you, you were still bound by one thing: the laws of the mind. It was just as unkillable as she was and she tried to kill it but no matter what the laws of emotion, of wanting, of needing still caged her in a prison she couldn’t break out her.

No matter what she did Nastya couldn’t escape it. She had traveled across the galaxy, inflicted horrors beyond the imagination, and seen the history of almost everyone and everything. No matter what it still found her: feeling found her. She still felt anger, felt joy, felt sadness, she stillfelt. It didn’t matter what she told herself. Fear might’ve belonged to those who could get hurt but Nastya could get hurt.

The biggest things to fear weren’t vampires or demons. It wasn’t death or loss. It wasn’t war or famine or plagues. The biggest thing to fear was being seen, being let down,getting hurt. It was the fact that even the most powerful, immortal being was capable of fear at all. And it was showing that fear to the one person who’d promise you’d never show anything deeper than an eye roll or a sarcastic smirk. 

So she didn’t tell him. She didn’t tell him she was leaving. She didn’t tell him she was afraid. All she said was 

“Hand me my screwdriver.”

-

Jonny knew something was wrong the moment Nastya walked in. He knew there was something she wasn't telling him. Even when she said nothing, he knew. He could ask her what was wrong.

Johnny was not a being of care, he was not a being of love. If anyone asked what he loved he’d say nothing but guns, murder and whiskey but love was a bit of an inaccurate term there. Jonny really couldn’t say he loved those things, they were just firecrackers, bursts of glory and light that ignited his rusty heart for a bit before it went back to being a barely functional lump of metal. Jonny couldn’t really say he loved anything, couldn’t say he loved anyone, though maybe there was something inside him that wanted to. 

Jonny wondered what was keeping him alive. Sure, he was alive due to the doctor’s mechanization but he wondered what was making him live. What caused him to move, act, eat, and talk and do the shit that the living do. That mechanized heart may have been the reason he was still breathing but there was something else that was making him a person 

Jonny supposed it was the stories. He was a storyteller of sorts and he was a living story that could never end. As long as there was fear in the world, as long as there was hope and pain and tragedy and yearning, stories would be told and as long as stories were told, he would remain, even if his ability to feel anything that those stories were about had long faded. The Jonny D’ville who walked and talked was not so much a man as a character, a character in a neverending story

Jonny could inquire about Nastya, his crewmate, his companion though immortality, his friend. He could ask her what was wrong, comfort her, show he loved her. But the Johnny that could do that died eons ago. The Jonny that was alive, the one that couldn’t be killed, Jonny d’Ville, that was someone that couldn't do any of that. He was a character, a story, a caricature, and that character wasn’t created to show love.

Jonny didn’t ask what was wrong about Nastya. He didn’t pry into what had upset her. Instead all he said was,

“I don’t know where the fuck your bloody screwdriver is. Now get out my face before I blast your brains out.”

**Author's Note:**

> I remember seeing writing advice that mentioned that what's left unsaid can be more powerful than what is and that's basically the whole theme of this. It also allowed me to let out my pretentious prosy side because my other fics are more lighthearted. This was written kinda late, when I should've been studying so maybe this isn't to coherent but I hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
